Review of FullCAM forest fire event parameters with recommendations supported by a literature review

[摘要] - Australia's greenhouse gas National Inventory System uses FullCAM (Full Carbon Accounting Model) to estimate the fluxes of carbon into and out of all biomass, litter, debris and soil carbon pools in forest and agricultural systems. FullCAM simulates the interactions between fire behaviour, fuel consumption, turnover of debris and soil pools and vegetation regrowth via 36 unique parameters via a carbon mass-balance accounting approach.- This report reviews the literature on the impacts of fires on carbon cycling in Australian forests and assess the five current forest fire event types and their parameters in FullCAM, and makes recommendations as to the suitability (or otherwise) of the current fire event types and parameters. - A three phase methodology was adopted to enable a statistical summary of relevant literature to be prepared. This search yielded 3168 literature results investigating fire research in Australia from which 60 articles provided estimates for FullCAM parameter values.- The literature provided direct data on combustion or transfer ratios for 18% of FullCAM's event parameters, with only 7.5% providing robust estimates (greater than five supporting articles). This overall lack of data means that expert judgement (largely) is used to parameterise FullCAM, and subsequently simulate forest fire events within Australia. - The parameter values obtained from the literature were biased toward southern open and tall eucalypt forests and were dominated from observations from management burns. There were very few observations of carbon fluxes from wildfires. Forested woodlands comprise approximately 80% of the forested area and are subject to regular burning but are not represented in the literature.- Table 5 presents revised FullCAM parameter values for the five existing fire events. For approximately half of the table there is no evidence (either in the literature or from expert opinion) for the existing values or alternatives. One quarter were revised according to expert opinion and/or the literature. A further quarter were unchanged based on expert opinion and/or the literature- Table 6 presents a recommended revised fire event table and parameter values supported by expert opinion and the literature. The revisions are based on delineation of carbon fluxes based on fireline intensity for propagating fires (i.e. wild or prescribed) and post-removal management burns. The propagating fire values are based on those of King et al. (2007).- This report has significant implications for carbon accounting of forest fires and identifies a number of key research gaps. In particular, considerable effort must be applied to fill in gaps in the knowledge relating to the transfer of live biomass to debris pools and transfer to the atmosphere of those debris pools both during and after fire.

[发布日期] 2012-06-30 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)